Trusty Tom's Thailand Blog

The Year of Our Buddha 2556 began with a triple bluff typical of Thailand’s soap opera politics.

A soap opera was cancelled.

What got people excited was that ‘Nua Mek 2’ told the story of a prime minister who was really a ghost, his crooked deputy who was involved in a dubious satellite project, and a sorcerer who performed black magic rites to manipulate the political power play.

Parallels were drawn with Thai prime minister Yingluk Shinawatra running a government that was really controlled by her brother, former PM Thaksin Shinawatra, from exile in Dubai after being convicted of political corruption.

The allusion to the satellite project was taken as a metaphor for the way Thaksin Shinawatra had curried popular support among the poor on a road trip to Eastern Thailand immediately before changing Thai law so he could sell his holdings in a Thai satellite telecoms company to some Singaporeans for 70 billion baht. (£1 billion then; £1.46 billion now.)

Thaksin’s outraged business rivals had then instigated a bloodless military coup in the yellow colours of the King, and Thaksin had been forced to flee the country.

After ‘democracy’ was restored, two governments favourable to Thaksin were elected by his supporters. Unfortunately, according to the new morality imposed by the military, one PM disqualified himself from the job by ’corruptly’ appearing on a TV cookery programme. The second was thwarted by the ‘Yellow Shirt’ occupation of Suvarnabhumi airport that brought tourism to Thailand to an abrupt halt.

That led to fresh elections. A Democrat government opposed to Thaksin seized power and also sequestrated 70 billion baht of what it regarded to be Thaksin’s ill-gotten gains.

After a ludicrous televised debate between PM Abhisit Vejjajiva and three of Thaksin’s stooges, who repeatedly demanded yet another election and refused to talk about anything else, the rabble was roused into a ‘Red Shirt’ revolution that occupied and paralysed the centre of Bangkok, saw 100 lives lost and culminated in the burning down of a high-end shopping mall.

Then, finally, an election took place in Spring 2011 that just happened to be the rainy season.

The change of government took two months to implement and, with no one in authority to manage the floodwaters upstream at the crucial time, Yingluk Shinawatra was returned to administer a country a third of which was under water, including the outskirts of Bangkok itself.

Once the waters subsided, the new government instituted populist policies such as ‘the Rice Bank’ (recommended by Thaksin), that paid poor farmers more than their rice was worth and more even than it could be sold for on world markets, plunging Thailand into debt over its biggest export.

And a 300 baht minimum daily wage that many small business simply could not afford and that led foreign investors to set up their new factories in Vietnam and Cambodia rather than in Thailand.

Obviously, a 20,000 baht a month minimum wage for university graduates (most of whom were netting a mere 9,000 to 13,000 a month) would have been more sensible. It would have at least meant that female graduates would not need to resort to prostitution to take care of their mothers. But a minimum wage for the intelligentsia would hardly have been populist.

The Bangkok Post had a field day over the cancellation of the soap opera Nua Mek 2.

“Critics claim the programme was pulled because it was too political, with its story line of corrupt politicians, black magic and a lucrative satellite contract, alleging pressure was applied by former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in Dubai.” 

Especially since, in the last episode, the “man in black” who had used magic powers to help corrupt politicians, faced the punishment of his body being dragged into hell.

But more wisdom was shown in the reader comments underneath the Bangkok Post news item.

Such as: “I am starting to think this is less about Nua Mek 2 and more about Abhisit Vejajiva not wanting Thaksin Shinawatra to get his way on this. It must eat Abhisit up inside knowing that a wanted criminal still runs and controls everything in Thailand from far away.”

And: “I think Channel 3 underestimates the IQ of Thai people by making the judgement for them.”

After all, what rabble-rousing political manipulator in his right mind would cancel the final three episodes of a soap opera watched by ten million voters?

However, if the opposition to him pulled the show off air, putting the finger on him for the cancellation, he might lose considerable popularity.

And if these were the tactics of the Democrats, they seemed to have worked, because a referendum to change the Thai constitution to retrospectively indemnify Thaksin’s corruption and enable him to return to Thailand was then put on hold.

He might have won. He only needed to buy the votes of 28 million Thais, which, at 1,000 baht a vote, would have cost him 28 billion baht. That would be a lot less than the 70 billion baht of his assets that had been confiscated by the Democrat government. And, of course, he would have soon found a few mega projects out of which he could recover that 28 billion baht.

But the dent in Thaksin's popularity caused by the axing of the soap took away the guarantee of success.

What next?

We’d had fire in the Burning of Bangkok. We’d had floods in the inundation of a third of the country. Would the “man in black” resort to something even worse? Perhaps a plague of locusts? That might score him some votes because poor Thais would see them as food.

To discover the truth about injustice in Thailand, read Tom Turner's 'Family Thais', available on Amazon at at http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00ARGFG7Y or http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00ARGFG7Y